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A very rare complete set of both text and game box wth pieces, in a superb state of preservation. Berthaud’s reading method Quadrille des enfants, described as ‘une méthode [qui] parle aux yeux et auc oreilles’ was well-known since the 1740s, but was elaborated in the early nineteenth century, with additional stories and an accompanying box of game pieces. The book was also popular in English as Syllabic Spelling, or a Summary Method of teaching Children to Read (1820 and later editions),
The coloured diagrams (with 20 or 24 vignettes each, giving a total of 84) consist of finely coloured pictograms corresponding to the letters given in the letterpress tables. These are reproduced on the 84 coloured bone game pieces, where the pictograms and letters are pasted to both sides of each piece.
The text volume here is described as the fifteenth edition on its title, with a publisher’s address suggesting a publication date of 1830. On the basis of the very few surviving copies, it appears that the game box was added from at least the ninth edition of 1828, but it is very rare for a text and box to survive together in any edition. Sets complete with all 84 game pieces in almost perfect condition, as here, must be almost unknown. Not in Gumuchian or Cotsen (the latter describing a copy of the text only dated 1815, prior to the addition of the game box). The Cotsen collection at Princeton does, however, also contain an example of the game dated c. 1840s.

Manuscript and watercolour maquettes for an apparently unpublished game, including a portion of a folding game mat (on linen), a sheet of counters (uncut, on parchment), numerous drawings and sketches as trials for the game positions (on paper and tracing paper, some coloured) and several sheets of manuscript instructions in French and Spanish. The game seems to have been a type of lotto, with parchment counters (corresponding to game positions) which were to be placed in a spherical wooden ‘bank’ for shuffling, before being drawn by the players.
The game’s origin in a French household at Saint Sébastien is indicated by the use of numerous scraps of waste paper from the French Consul’s office there ― perhaps it was made by a member of his own family or staff. The sketches are highly accomplished and carefully rendered, often with several preliminary sketches before reduction in gouache to the size of the parchment game counters.

A miniature lotto set, rare complete with all the printed cards and counters.

First edition of this comprehensive study of the sociology of gambling by French writer and self-confessed ex-gambler Jean Dusaulx (1728-1799). Gambling was deeply-rooted in French society, especially in Paris, where all classes (including the court) were obsessed with card games and lotteries. Dusaulx sought to analyse this craze and to point out the moral depravity which it both reflected and encouraged. He includes numerous anecdotes to illustrate the irrationality of the gambler, making De la Passion du Jeu an important account of this aspect of the social history of pre-Revolutionary France.